I’m currently trying to use the blog shortcode to replace your classic blog page.

The problem is that I use the YARPP plugin (Yet Another Related Post Plugin) which works fine on the classic blog page but which displays multiple related post on the blog page when I use the shoertcode (related posts are displayed under each post of the blog page).

Because it worked on the classic blog page and not on the blog shortcode page I assume this might be a bug on your side? Maybe from from a bad excerpt of the post…

The very latest version 4.9 of WordPress, named “Tipton” in honor of American jazz musician and bandleader William Lee Tipton, has just been released and is now available for download or update in your dashboard area. Just like all previous WordPress updates, the second and probably the last major release of the year brings a plethora of revolutionary improvements, bug fixes, general updates, and of course some exciting new features to both users and developers. So, without further ado, let's dive in and take a closer hands-on look at all the goodies WordPress 4.9 has to offer!

WordPress 4.9 for Users

#An Improved Customizer Workflow:

In WordPress 4.9, several improvements and new features have been added to the Customizer to deliver users a better experience and improve their theme customization workflow. These are as follows:

Save, Publish, Schedule & Share Theme Changes: Getting Inspired by the drafting and revision features of Customize Snapshots plug-in, the WordPress Core Team has added three new options to save theme changes in the Customizer, which function in the same way as you draft and revise posts:

Publish: Publishes theme changes immediately.

Save Draft: Saves your tweaks as a Draft and lets you publish whenever you want.

Schedule: Schedules your theme changes to automatically go live at a specific time.

Apart from that, with the new Share Preview Link feature, now Customizer also allows you to share a preview of the proposed site design changes with your team members as well as with your visitors who don’t have access to the Customizer. This makes the collaboration extremely easy!

Protect Your Changes with a Design Lock: Similar to post locking, design lock feature in WordPress 4.9 guards your theme changes so that no one can modify or delete all your hard work. This feature proves quite useful in situations where more than one designer is working on the same project.

A Better Flow for Creating Menus: In the previous version of WordPress, users often used to face a common problem of ‘Menu not showing up on the website’ as they forget to specify the menu location while creating a menu. In case you don’t remember, here’s the screenshot:

To solve this issue, WordPress 4.9 has broken the entire menu creation process into several small steps with clearer instructions, making it easier and smoother for users to create menus without any unnecessary button clicks.

Improved Theme Management: In WordPress 4.8 Customizer, you were able to only view your installed themes as shown below:

But in WordPress 4.9 Customizer, not only you can see all your installed themes but also you’ll be able to browse, preview and install themes directly from the WordPress.org theme directory. All you need to switch between ‘Installed themes’ and ‘WordPress.org themes’.

There is even an intuitive search box and a wide range of filters offered to narrow down your quest for the perfect theme.

A Prompt to Protect Your Work: Do you often forget to save your new draft design or post while leaving your desk in a rush? Don’t worry! With the inclusion of ‘autosave revisions’ in the Customizer, WordPress 4.9 will now ask you whether or not you want to save your unsaved changes when you return to your desk.

New Global Notification Area: Till version 4.8, WordPress doesn’t generate any success or failure messages about whether or not a save is committed. Instead, it just makes an indication by disabling the ‘Save & Publish’ button. But, in WordPress 4.9, a new Global Notification Area has been added underneath the Publish button in the Customizer to display these success/error messages.

#Widget Enhancements:

In addition to the WordPress Customizer, the widget area also got a couple of improvements and new exciting features:

A Brand New Gallery Widget: In earlier versions of WordPress, you needed to use Jetpack or another third-party plug-in to add images to the sidebar of your website or blog. To address this issue, Version 4.9 comes packed with a brand new dedicated Gallery widget which allows you to create a native gallery and show it up in any widget ready area.

And what's more, leveraging the power of the core WordPress Gallery functionality, you can even change the number of columns, size and order of your images to be displayed in your created sidebar gallery.

Improved Text Widget: Previously, you had to write the HTML code in order to add media files to the Text Widget. Wasn't that really a very time-consuming process? WordPress 4.9 fixes this by adding an intuitive ‘Add media’ button on the on top of the editor in the Text Widget, which allows users to directly embed images, video, and audio into the widget.

Additionally, the Text Widget now natively support shortcodes, eliminating the need of adding add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode') or add_filter('widget_text', 'shortcode_unautop') to plug-ins and themes.

Furthermore, there is a much better indication of saving the changes in widgets with the newly added Saved button. In WordPress 4.8, there was no such clear way to understand whether or not your changes are saved.

Expanded support for oEmbed: The Video Widget is currently limited to embedding videos from only two video platforms which are YouTube and Vimeo. The list has now been expanded to make it possible for you to embed videos from any platform that support oEmbed, like TED, CollegeHumor, FunnyOrDie, Facebook, etc.

Even, oEmbeds now also work outside the post content, including Text widgets. Is this really not a big deal?

Improved Widget Mapping: In earlier versions of WordPress, there were very high chances of disappearing or relocating widgets after you switch themes. On the other hand, Version 4.9 provides you a more persistent menu and widget placement when you change your website’s theme. An improved widget mapping helps widgets find their real home even after a major change, offering you a more reliable theme switching experience than ever.

WordPress 4.9 for Developers

#An Improved Code Editing Experience:

The biggest improvement made in version 4.9 for developers is the inclusion of a new JavaScript-powered code editing library, CodeMirror, within the WordPress core itself. Instead of displaying the code in plain text, the new code editor significantly improves your code writing and editing experience with handy features like:

Syntax error highlighting

Real time error checking and validation

Code suggestions

Auto-completion as you type

Automatically fixing common syntax mistakes

Starting in WordPress 4.9, the CodeMirror will enhance your coding experience in the theme editor, plug-in editor, and the Customizer. And if you don’t like the new syntax highlighting feature, you’re always free to turn it off from your user profile page.

#Sandbox and Tips for Greater Security:

Another minor improvement made to the editor is a pop-up warning message which comes into view when you try to directly edit any code in your theme or plug-in. WordPress 4.9 now warns you why it is a dangerous practice and how you can edit your files the right way. Additionally, as already mentioned above, version 4.9 now also warns you about saving a corrupted code when working on themes and plug-ins so you can sleep better at night.

Unless you confirm by clicking the ‘I understand’ button, you won’t be able to make any changes to your files!

#Customizer JS API Improvements:

The WordPress Core Team has made several improvements to the Customizer JS API, making it as easy to work with as the PHP API. These changes also allow for better controls, beautiful outer panels, and enhanced on-screen notifications.

#Upgraded MediaElement.js:

The MediaElementJS framework has been upgraded to v4.2.6, which removes all jQuery dependencies from the WordPress core, enhances accessibility and gives a new modern look to the UI. In fact, this is the change that makes it possible for the Video Widget to support all oEmbed providers.

Other Minor Improvements & Fixes

As you’d expect, WordPress 4.9 also brings many minor improvements and fixes that are useful to both users and developers alike. Some notable tweaks and changes are:

Removal of the PressThis bookmarklet and SWFUpload library

Addition of new capabilities for activating/deactivating individual plug-ins and managing translation installation and updates

Added support for MySQL servers connecting to IPv6 hosts

The use of max-width for default captions

Storage of video creation date in Meta

Plug-in icon now shows up next to the plug-in when you go to run updates.

Users now will require clicking a confirmation link through an email in order to change their email address

The internet is rich with a large number of resources this is due to the high number of blogs and websites created and published every day. With blogs and website providing content and information of marketing, education, recreation, travel, fitness, health etc. This is due to the diversity of readers, visitors and users of the internet. On top of this, the field of blogging is very wide and has no restrictions at all, however there are certain standards and limitations that every blogger or blog owner has to adhere to.

However, blogging itself comes with its own challenges. Of cos you will be having ideas and several contents that you will be sharing with your readers from all over the world, but if your blogging platform is not well equipped and stable enough, you will not be able to reach out to your desired audience. Most people call these platforms - the CMS(s) or content management systems. And most of them be it the amateur or expert and experienced bloggers find WordPress the most reliable and credible blogging platform that can help a blogger reach the appropriate audience.

There are many benefits of WordPress blog hosting. Today, am going to elaborate on 5 of the benefits or rather features the WordPress hosting has over other blogging platforms.

No stress over Traffic Loads

One of the problem most bloggers face when they opt to host their blogs on their own is the lack or poor management of higher traffic loads. Like in a business, at the beginning the number of customers is utterly minimal but as the business starts to grow and gain customer attention, the number of customers will increase drastically hence there will be need to accommodate this growth.

The same applies to blogging and blogs. As a blog gains popularity, the number of traffic to the website will increase drastically. And there will be need to counter this increase in traffic. In order to enable the blog to handle this high traffic. This is very easy when using WordPress hosting services. You will just have to pay a little fee for you to upgrade your hosting service.

No need for any web hosting knowledge.

First of all WordPress Hosting is very simple and easy to use. Its features are so explanatory that any Tom, Dick and Harry can use the service. Armature are able to enjoy the WordPress hosting services without worrying how web design or even HTML and CSS work.

The best part is that WordPress does not only accommodate non-coders but also the coders as well. For those coding gurus who find it necessary to be able to inspect and modify their blogs’ source code before publishing, WordPress offers you an HTML version of your blog post.

Cheap but still very powerful

This is basically the key benefit of WordPress blog hosting. You do not have to pay a lot of money for hosting services. WordPress blog hosting offers you a platform where your blog is fully secure and most of all completely managed. All at a reasonable price.

On top of that, it offers bloggers numerous widgets and a wide range of themes that they can apply to improve their site’s appearance. With additional in born features and a smooth editor for optimizing posts, WordPress is every blogger’s platform of choice.

WordPress Blog hosting is safe and sound

WordPress hosts offers automatic security as a key feature of their services. So, what does this mean to you as a blog owner? Basically, this means that you will not be requires to directly install security plugin or software to enhance your blog’s security. You will also not have the worry of any vulnerabilities in your blog’s security or need to upgrade any security policies and measures.

All these are seamlessly done by the managed WordPress hosting. This means you will not be required to code or configure any validation, all you will do is provide usernames and passwords as WordPress does all the complex details.

Basically, WordPress blog hosting is one of the most secure hosting services as the platform itself is integrated into the whole hosting environment. On the internet to today, the greatest concern is security. This is because of the rise of cyber and malware attacks. These are not things that ypu can manage on your own especially when you have no idea of what they entail. So, that is where the automated security system of the managed WordPress hosting comes in handy.

The Best Anti-spam filter.

WordPress offers you a complete package, everything you need is all there for installation. One best thing about the content management system is its additional security features that helps increase your blog or sites security against spam and unwanted comments. This will keep your blog safe from anyone who is trying to hack into your system or violate you website’s security policies.

The most beneficial feature of WordPress blog hosting is that it secures your blog from SQL injection. What does this mean? This is where some internet users post URLs with the aim of maximizing your blog to find faults and vulnerabilities. In this way they will get access to you admin or login into other users account and mess up your whole work.

Conclusion

These are some of the major reasons why you should choose WordPress blog hosting over other platforms. This hosting is managed meaning all you have to do is write contents and post, the rest of the complex tasks are done for you. And the best part it is affordable to both the armature and expert bloggers. On top of that, WordPress is very user friendly and easy to install – can be used by both coders and non-coders. You are also provided with web themes and most of its websites are responsive – can be access on mobiles and desktops. The most admirable feature is that this CMS platform automatically updates itself and its plugins – meaning you will not worry about missing any new features and configurations.

Blogging is sun and most prolific way of turning your passion or rather hobby into profit. All you need to do is write articles about what you love, then when your blog gains the adequate amount of traffic you start monetizing it.

However owning a WordPress blog comes with its own challenges as many individuals start out excited, with a vision of a brighter future but end up giving up. Blogging has two main challenges – lack of knowledge of what to write and inability to drive high traffic to a blog. Most people tend to give up because the just follow guidelines and tutorials on how to improve their blogs blind forgetting the crucial key elements. That is the ability to create profitable blog that drives quality traffic and is able to make them tons of money.

Here, we are going to discuss the key elements that you need to follow for you to know what to write on your blog, get enough and high quality traffic and finally use your blog to make money.

Research, Plan and Execute

Basically, proper research, planning and execution are the key elements in the success of everything. And this goes for the success and profitability of a WordPress blog. This are very important for you as they will help you post high quality content that have good SEO.

Research comes on top of this list. You need to know what other bloggers and readers are talking about in the niche you have chosen. You can create a document, where you write your ideas, note what other bloggers are talking about in your niche, top headlines about your niche and any kind of information relating to your niche. After gathering some ideas, you can do your keyword planning using keyword research tools like Keyword Planner from Google. The aim here is finding keyword with not only high monthly searches but also low competition.

After that is done, now it time to start planning the content to write. For you to succeed you need to provide your readers with unique and high-quality content. This will also influences your search engine ranking. Here is not the place for copy-past, you need to do research and use the information gathered to inspire your content. Use this ideas and keywords you have research on to come up with unique topics for your content.

Let us have a simple example, where your niche is – weight loss. Other bloggers in this niche may be writing about a new weight loss pill. You therefore need to research on a keyword that is closely related to this new weight loss pill, the keyword may or may not be directly targeting that specific weight loss pill. For example, if the pill is called “XY Weight Loss Pill”, you might target this new pill through the generic keyword “weight loss pills” or just target the pill directly by name “xy weight loss pills”. In so doing, you can use this information to writing unique and original content.

After the research and planning phases are complete, you can now take action. Begin writing your content using the information you have researched and planned on, then publish.

On-Page SEO

Search Engine Optimization abbreviates as SEO is very crucial to your blog’s and content’s search engine ranking. One of the best way to drive traffic to your blog is through organic search engine traffic. With this you will not need to pay anything for advertisement. On top of that, you are also able to do SEO on your own without the need of an SEO agency. All you need is to spare some time to do your content’s SEO.

On-Page Search Engine Optimization is crucial for your blog’s ranking. In addition, you need to take care of your on-page SEP before creating backlinks and doing off-page SEO for your blog. This involves first researching on your keyword then content optimization by using the focus keywords and even adding more keywords in case the content is long about 1500 plus words. This is easy as you will be doing it when writing your blog content.

Some of the key elements to have in mind when conducting on-page SEO are – choosing a target keyword and including it randomly within your content. On average you should use it about 4 times for every 100 words and should also be included in the content’s title. Your content should also have sub headers and it will be great if at least one header contains the target keyword. On top of those factors, it is also of great importance to use the target keyword at least once or twice in your content’s introductory paragraph and at least once in the closing paragraph.

Another factor is the inclusion of images in your blog content. These images should all have the <ALT> tag. And the target keyword should be used to name this <ALT> tags. This is crucial for the images’ search engine ranking.

The greatest thing about WordPress is the fact that it is rich in plugins that will help simplify your work. So, in case you need help with SEO and on-page SEO, just install the free Yoast SEO, this will simplify and ease your on-page SEO work.

Ability to share mostly on social media

Social Media has one of the largest communities of free readers and traffic. For this reason, you will require this social media traffic and so your will make it easy for your readers to share your blog contents. Making the addition of social media buttons very crucial for your blog. Because whenever a ready likes your content they will most likely share it on their social media handles. This will help in reader engagement and increase traffic.

With WordPress you do not need to be a programmer for you to add social sharing buttons to your blog. All you so is install a social sharing button. Some of these plugins are Jetpack and SumoMe.

Now it is time for you to implement and execute these 3 key elements of a profitable WordPress blog.

A lot of us have heard of Content Management Systems. But do not know what it really means. Basically CMS stands for a web platform for creating and managing digital or online content, examples may include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. Today, topic is all about WordPress. A step by step tutorial on how to start a WordPress blog in 5 minutes. Today, WordPress is the most preferred CMS due to its scalability, ease of usage, richness in feature and plugins and the large community od developers that supports it.

As a new developer you may be confused on which platform to choose during start up. I recommend WordPress, am not being biased it is just that this platform speaks for itself. You don’t require any sophisticated coding skills to use WordPress. That aside, lest get to the topic for today “How to start a WordPress blog in 5 minutes”. This tutorial is not only directed to those who want to start blogs but also those who want to start their own website – the steps are very similar, nothing to really split the two.

A quick review of what this topic entails.

Starting a WordPress blog is one of the simplest thing in the field of web development. It actually all about clicking links and buttons. It entails these six major steps:

Choose and set up your blog’s domain name and hosting.

Install WordPress using the cPanel

Choose a theme for your blog

Install the required plugins

Create amazing and useful content

Promote your blog.

First Step: Choose and set up your blog’s domain name and hosting

The first and most crucial step of deploying a website or blog is getting a domain name and hosting. This step requires adequate research and attention as it will influence your online presence.

You need a unique domain name that is short for the readers to easily remember and also reflects your blog’s niche.

When it comes to hosting there are two kinds – the shred and managed hosting. The best thing about shared hosting is that it is very cheap as you share a server with many people. However, managed hosting is more expensive as compared to shared hosting due to the fact that it is rich in features.

Some of the hosts that offer shared hosting are – HostGator, DreamHost, Bluehost etc. While those that offer managed hosting are ZippyKid, Page.Ly, WPEngine etc. In my point of view managed web hosting is the best because all the configurations are setups for your hosting is done on your behalf. However, I would recommend Bluehost because they have partnered with WordPress for a long time and have enough experience in everything relating to it.

Second Step: Install WordPress

This is the easiest step as it takes less than 5 minutes. And most of the WP hosts offer a one-click WP installation. On the Hosting service’s cPanel you will find a button with the WP logo just click on it to install the latest version of the platform. Follow the onscreen instruction to complete the installation.

Third Step: Choose a theme for your blog

This is another vital step as it will influence your sites appearance and impression to the readers. Your theme should also reflect on your blog’s niche. WP offers you a wide range of themes – you can create your own custom theme, buy a premium theme, choose a free theme or edit a theme.

I would advise against creating your own custom theme as it will entail a lot of work and is time consuming, even though you are guaranteed of a unique theme.

The best option here is buying a premium theme. Several websites and web design agencies sell affordable WP themes – this will save you time and money. But for a beginner please go for a free theme. This can be found on the official WP website – worpress.org.

You can also use the theme editor like Aetisteer which can help you create themes easily and quickly even with no web design skills.

Fourth Step: Install Plugins

The best thing about WP is the numerous features and plugins it offers its users. You can install plugins to extend WP’s functionality. Most of the plugins help in building better and faster blogs, creating memberships for your blog and improving your blog’s SEO.

Fifth Step: Create unique and useful content.

After creating and setting up your blog, it will require content. You need to do research on your niche and come up with ideas, keywords and titles for your content. Content is what will drive traffic to your site and traffic is what will determine your blog’s success. You content should be meaningful and useful to the reader for it to computer attention.

Bottom line, choose a niche that you are well conversant with.

Sixth Step: Promote your blog.

This is the last part of not only this tutorial but also any blogging endeavor. Promoting your blog it the second way for driving traffic to and the ultimate success of your blog. This is mostly important when you are aiming towards making money using your blog. There are several ways you can use to promote your blog:

Use advertisement platforms like BingAds, Google’s AdWords etc.

Create an email list and distribute your contents

Share on social media fan pages mostly Facebook and Twitter due to their large user population

Do some guest blogging for some of the popular blogs and add your blog’s link.

Partner with other bloggers and agree to promote each other.

Conclusion

Starting a WordPress blog is very easy and can be completed within a matter of minutes. All it contains is a few clicks here and there. The greatest challenge when it comes to owning a blog is the ability to create unique and meaningful content, most bloggers tend to give up along the way. They end up running out of ideas because they were in a rush when choosing their blogs’ niche. Before starting a blog, do your homework and get it right.

Custom post types present an interesting opportunity to make your site unique and differential from other sites. With it, your visitors will enjoy an improved readability of the content in your website and will be motivated to read through all the pages. Moreover, if you want to make your standard WordPress website a fully-fledges content management system you can easily do so with custom post types.

What are custom post types?

A custom post type is any type of content, say pages and posts for instance, that you can create and manipulate to fit your own unique needs. For example if you’re a beautician you can create a custom page to showcase the different beauty products that you offer.

Creating Custom post types

The two main ways for creating custom post types are either using plugins or by coding. Plugins are for non-tech savvy people who want to customize their post types. Codes on the other hand are mostly used by developers who understand the basics of creating custom posts from scratch.

There are a lot of plugins that make it easy for non-tech designers to customize their posts. This article will only shed light on the 6 most popularly used custom post types.

1. Custom Post Type Maker

This plugin is the simplest amongst the others that we’ll talk about. It’s presented in a user-friendly interface and can be used even with people who have no coding knowledge. It’s only divided into two parts; Taxonomies and Post Types.

This plugin will also feature all other custom post types that are already registered on your site whether you created them though this plugin or not.

Merits

Let’s you view all registered taxonomies and custom post types.

Gives you the freedom to create and configure your custom taxonomies and custom post types.

Has a user-friendly interface

Demerits

Incapable of automatically displaying your taxonomies and new posts and therefore you have to do this on your own.

2. Types

This is a popular free to download plugin that makes it possible for you to create custom fields, taxonomies, types and custom posts. It features a unique developer and user accommodating interface. It has both a simple GUI for non-tech savvy people and PHP API for developers who understand the coding language. For most people, the best feature in this plugin is its ability to allow you to define parent/child relationship between different posts. This plugin also allows you to add custom fields to pages, posts and users and you can even design the appearance of the fields in the WordPress admin.

Merits

Supports multiple languages.

Allows you to define parent/child relationships for posts.

Features a field’s access control.

Features custom fields for users and content.

Allows you to create and configure your custom taxonomies and custom post types.

3. Pods

This is a free plugin for fields, taxonomies and custom posts that that features an original user-friendly interface. It’s designed to function like a wizard as opposed to a dashboard.

The pod plugin uses an organizer called “pod” that arranges all the taxonomies and custom post types you have created using the plugin. With this plugin you can also extend the existing content types users, media, taxonomies and comments. In addition you can create advanced content types whose database doesn’t engage default WordPress tables, and also create custom settings pages.

Merits

Features a modern and user-friendly interface

Allows you to extend existing content types.

Allows you to create and configure custom taxonomies and custom post types.

This free custom post type comes with a host of unbelievably handy features and options. On installation, you’re presented with a well-organized dashboard with an attractive display of all the available plugin features and options.

There is no limit to what you can do with this plugin. You can edit the post types already on your site, create new corresponding taxonomies and even create new post types. A plus for this plugin is that it allows you to import or export a custom post between sites.

Merits

Features advanced labeling for post types.

Allows for post types to be attached to custom and built-in taxonomies.

Allows you to create and configure your custom taxonomies and custom post types.

Demerits

Incapable of displaying registered taxonomies or post types in your current theme.

5. CustomPress

If you want a custom post type plug in that will give you flexibility in the management of your custom post types then this is the right plugin. It features a modern, responsive interface with everything that you need. It allows you to add your own selection of post type and also custom field like checkboxes, drop-down menus, radio buttons, and text boxes.

This plugin, unlike others is not free. You have the option to either purchase a full membership for a monthly fee of 24.50$ which comes with WPMU DEV’s themes and plugins. Or you can buy a stand-alone install for $19 per month.

Merits

Features a responsive and user friendly interface

It fits all themes since it will generate shortcode libraries and theme files automatically.

The shortcodes can be used to add taxonomies in posts automatically.

Allows you to create your unique custom fields, which means for every custom post type you can create a different custom field.

Allows you to create and configure your custom taxonomies and custom post types.

6. Easy Content Types

This is a premium plugin that offers the best value for money amongst all payable custom type plugin. On installation, you will get to understand what custom types are from the dashboard and will also have access to plugin modules that will make it possible for you to work with your new taxonomies and post types.

In addition to the explained to detail modules, you will also find a settings page from where you can manipulate how your custom post types will be displayed. One unique feature in this plugin is that you can tweak the access credentials such that you give special access to who can use the plugin or manipulate your content types.

Merits

Captivating user interface.

Allows you to create and configure custom taxonomies and custom post types in unbelievably short time period.

You can edit all created meta boxes, taxonomies, and custom post types.

Designed for both non-developers and developers.

Features a drag-and-drop field organizing.

Allows creation of Meta boxes and custom fields for the boxes.

Has an export feature for taxonomies and custom post types.

Conclusion

With these custom type plugins, it’s easy to make your website stand out from the crowd. This is important because a unique website that’s also SEO friendly can attract massive traffic which is ultimately what every website owner wants.

The internet has revolutionized not just how people live and communicate, but how they shop, how they are entertained, and even how they learn. In short, all businesses are now run on the internet. Unfortunately creating a website or having your business on the World Wide Web does not necessarily translate to having customers or fans for that matter. There are lots of websites with little or no visitors or with occasional visitors that spend very little time on the site for lack of interest. With the pressure and competition to have your website recognized (ranking) and listed by major search engines like Google, it’s important that you closely monitor the performance of your WordPress website.

What causes poor performance of a website?

There are various factors that can result in the poor performance of a website. Some of the problems are caused by seemingly obvious things such as an outdated plugin or code that was used in the creation of the WordPress website, and others are theme related causes.

Creating an attractive website is simply the ‘substance’ in the cake but not the icing. If you don’t regularly update your website and keep to changing trends your traffic is bound to reduce as you will lose visitors by failing to capture their attention. Keeping a website updated is one thing that most newbies in WordPress website creation fail to do. They fail to understand that the process of attracting visitors to the website does not merely end in the launching of an attractive website.

There are a lot of ways to ensure that your website remains a highly performing website. It’s a smart move to incorporate any or all of the tips so that you can have a functional and productive website, because let’s face it, the quality and performance of your website will highly influence the success of your business.

Optimize MySQL database

MySQL is an important component in PHP application and the SQL (Structured Query Language) is credited for flexibility of use and quick processing. Here are the steps for optimizing MySQL database.

Login into your phpMyadmin account

Click on the SQL option to clean up the database or use the functions available.

You need to first check each database even though this takes up a lot of time.

Developers will mostly use MYSQL in creating web pages based on similar queries and static data. When you optimize MySQL database server you are sure to realize increase in the performance of your website.

Update your WordPress website on a regular basis

There’s literally nothing static when it comes to technology. That means HTML and PHP codes change every day; newer ones are created and older versions updated. A website that was created using PHP or HTM codes say five years back, will not perform as efficiently as one created with the same codes a year ago because really, the codes are only similar in the names but a lot of the components have changed. The variety in the versions of WordPress plugins and themes also changes on a frequent basis. Themes and plugins make your website more interesting and increase the readability of the content. Unless you keep up-to-date with new trends in the themes and plugins it will be difficult to have your website rank high. Updating the themes and plugins also enables you to enhance the security of the website. Old websites are more susceptible to hacks in comparison to current websites.

Get Rid of Unwanted Plugins

There are lots of plugins for WordPress. Unlike things like clothes for instance, these won’t magically disappear from the market. When downloading plugins be wary that you don’t download the archaic ones. It’s also important that as you update your website with the latest plugins, you also get rid of the old unused ones. Upgrade your plugins every three to six months when newer versions are mostly released.

Log in to your WordPress admin and go to the plugin screen.

Select the plugin for deactivation or uninstallation.

Click on the deactivate option.

Ensure that you only deactivate or delete downloadable plugins and not the default WordPress Plugins.

Use the most applicable plugin for your site

The WordPress Plugin directory contains lots of plugins, both premium and free, and sometimes it can be challenging to select only one. If in doubt of the right plugin for your website, it’s important that you consult an expert.

Search for your preferred plugin from the WordPress dashboard.

Click on the plugin and the ‘add new’ option.

If you can’t find a plugin easily simply search for it by typing a few words in the search box and you’ll be presented multiple options.

Use the right WordPress theme

Like plugins, there are a lot of both free and premium themes for WordPress. Whether you opt for the free ones, like most website developers do, or a paid one, it’s important that you select a stable one and that will represent you well. Select a theme in accordance to the needs of your website. The theme will affect both the feel and the functionality of your site; it will either make your website vibrant and attractive or dull and boring.

Delete Unused Themes

If you form a habit of regularly updating your WordPress, you will come cross many new captivating themes. Having a lot of unused themes on your WordPress can slow down the speed of your site, and also weaken the security of the site. Ones you have identified an interesting theme, it’s important that you delete the old themes.

Optimize on the size of your images

The size of images, videos and other graphic content largely impact how fast a website loads. Most visitors, on realizing that a website is loading slowly because it contains a lot of ‘heavy’ content, will quickly close it and move to another either to save their internet bundles or to save time. To enhance the speed of your website, crop large images to smaller sizes and desist from uploading oversize images. Also, instead of over whelming your WP site with images, you could fill it up with lots of interesting content.

Choose a stable hosting provider

Hosting is the service that makes it possible for website developers to showcase their sites on the World Wide Web. The performances of your website, its SEO ranking, its tight security, among others are highly influenced by your host provider. When choosing a hosting company, choose one that is reputable and that has stuff that are knowledgeable on solving WP website related problems.

Conclusion

The pressure to manage a functional and high ranking/ high performing website can be overwhelming for one person, or if you’re not an expert at the art. If you’re unable to apply these tips or don’t see improvements after applying the changes, consult a WP website expert to help you out.

Content Delivery Network CDN is known to be a great way of speeding up a website. By making use of this network, you can easily enhance your website’s speed which would in turn enhance its overall performance for the end users as well as different kinds of search engine bots. In addition to this, it also brings highly positive effects on the ranking of your website in different search engines. This is due to the fact that websites incorporated with CDNs are known to deliver a fine experience to all their visitors on account of navigation and content.

Content Delivery Network is also known to parallelize different kinds of downloads all across your host names. In other words, when you put up a request to access a web page, several sub requests would be generated for CSS, scripts, images, etc. In case everything including the CSS, scripts and the images are in a single domain, it takes much longer as all the requests are processed one by one which slows down the entire operation. On the other hand, when CDN is used, all the downloads across your host names are brought up to speed and the content access is provided to the client immediately. So if you are interested in configuring a content delivery network system of your own to deploy into a shared hosting word press blog, you need to go through the sections discussed below.

How to deploy a CDN into a shared hosting word press blog

There are different choices when it comes to the deployment of a CDN into different kinds of websites. You can use both free as well as paid services in this regard. If you are interested in a free or low budget experience, the best course of action is to create a CDN of your own. It may easily be created along with your existing domain regarding the word press blog. All you need is to use the w3 total cache plugin and you are good to go.

Before you try to make an advancement with the whole CDN thing, it is highly recommended to take a complete backup of the whole My SQL database along with all your directory data. You need to keep in mind that taking a backup of all your data is critically important as you do not want to get stuck with nothing in case something goes south

So if you want to configure a CDN with W3 total cache plugin to use with a shared hosting word press blog, you need to follow the steps given below.

Step 1:

First of all, you need to open up the FTP client associated with your blog and get in to the domain’s FTP user account.

Step 2:

Get into the domain’s home directory. Look for the .htaccess file. Once it has been spotted, you need to make it writable. It may easily be done by granting the 777 permissions on a temporary basis.

Step 3:

Open up the file for wp-config. It is usually present in the home directory. Once you have managed to open it, type in the following code piece at the bottom of the file:

Define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true)

Step 4:

The code listed above grants the permission for using the W3 total cache plugin. So this step requires you to get this cache for your site. It may easily be downloaded from word press.

Step 5:

Now you need to extract the zipped folder to get the contents of the W3 total cache plugin. Once you’re done, upload the entire folder to this path: /wp-content/plugins. Now get in to the word press dashboard for your sit and activate this plugin.

Step 6:

Get in to the cPanel provided by your web host and make a new sub domain while giving it this name: cdn.yourdomain.com. Once you are done, get into the domain FTP account. You will see two different domains here that are, a root domain and a sub domain.

Step 7:

Get to the root domain and download the entire wp-content folder to a local folder.

Step 8:

Open up the sub domain directory present in the FTP. Upload the entire wp-content directory there. All the work for the server as well as hosting is almost done. Not it is time to configure the W3 total cache plugin into the word press blog.

Step 9:

Go to the settings tab for your word press and choose the W3 total cache. Get into the general settings tab and activate the feature for page caching while selecting the disk enhancement method.

Step 10:

Hit ‘Minimize option’ and choose Disk Method. The disk method may only be chosen in case you are using shared hosting. Other methods might be used in case you have a VPS or dedicated hosting plan.

Step 11:

The content delivery network CDN must be selected as the self hosted or FTP upload.

Step 12:

Under the settings for page cache, choose the method for compression as Gzip and deflate. This is supposed to reduce the overall page size and load it faster. You need to save your configuration and move on to the next steps.

Step 13:

Go to the CDN settings and choose your host active theme files. It is not recommended to use the wp-include files in this case as it ends up generating errors sometimes.

Step 14:

Choose force over writing of existing files. Save the changes and move on to the next steps.

Step 15:

At this stage, you would be able to see your FTP settings. You need to provide the settings for your web hosting FTP in the order of hostname, FTP username, FTP password.

Step 16:

Enter the following path:

/cdn.yourdomain.com

Step 17:

Save the changes and empty all your caches.

Step 18:

Try opening your website. You will be seeing a dramatic improvement in your website on account of speed and performance.

Introduction
WordPress is a very effective platform for carrying out different kinds of web development operations. That’s the reason why it is being used throughout the world for the development of different kinds of websites. One of the best features offered by WordPress is the fact that it allows website owners to move to any new host without disturbing the overall layout and functionalities of the platform. A guide on how you might be able to move your WordPress website to a new host is discussed below.Step 1: Choose the right WordPress host
In case you are not satisfied with the optimality of your website even after optimizing it the best possible way, it might be time for you to move to another WordPress host that possesses the capability of handling excessive amounts of traffic. While you are looking for such a hosing services provider, it is highly important to make this choice carefully so that you do not have to go through the same frustrating experience any time soon.

Step 2: Set up the duplicator to ease up your migration
After you have chosen a reliable web hosting services provider for your WordPress website, it is now time to get the duplicator plugin for your site. Duplicator may be referred to as a highly recommended, free plugin that proves to be really helpful when a website owner is looking to migrate to a new host. The best part about this plugin is the fact that it allows you to move to any new domain of your choice without having to lose your SEO standings.
So after installing the duplicator plugin, you need to activate it and head to Duplicator > Packages and hit the ‘Create New’ button.

Now hit ‘Next’.

After ensuring that your scan results came out right, hit the ‘Build’ button.

After the completion of the project, hit the Archive and Installer buttons to download all the content.

Step 3: Import all your WordPress website contents to the new host
After you are done with downloading the installer and archive files on your computer, you need to upload them to the new host. This may easily be done. All you need to do is to connect to the new web host while making use of the FTP. Care should be taken in this regard as the root directory needs to be empty first.

Step 4: Modify your host files in order to avoid downtime
After uploading the installer and archive files to the new host, it is time for you to open the file named as installer.php in your browser. You can easily access it using http://www.example.com/installer.php. however, when you try to open up the URL, you come across a little problem as it takes you to the old web hosting services provider’s portal and error code 404 is displayed on the screen.
So in order to get rid of this issue, first of all you have to locate the IP address of the new web host by getting into the cPanel. Open up the stats link present at the left side of the screen and get the shared IP address.

The next step requires you to open up the notepad in administrator mode. Now click on File > Open and give this address:
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.

Open up the host files and enter the IP address at their bottom in the following format:
192.168.1.22 www.domainname.com
Now save the new changes and access the files on your new host easily.

Step 5: Initiate the process of duplicator migration
In order to initiate the process of duplicator migration, you need to go to the following address on your browser:
http://www.domainname.com/installer.php
in case you haven’t created your database while working on the new host, first you need to create one in the cPanel. After that, you need to fill in all the required information and hit the ‘Test Connection’ button.

In case your installer does not succeed connecting to the database, recheck the entered values to ensure they are correct. Now try again and when you have managed to successfully get into the database, hit the ‘Run Deployment’ button after going through all the notices and warnings.

The process takes a few minutes to complete. When you are done, the wizard will ask if you want to verify both the old and the new URL paths or not. Check them for accuracy and hit the ‘Run Update’ button to start updating the URLs. Finally you can complete the process by checking if everything seems to be in order or not.

Step 6: Updating the Domain
Till now, you have managed to create a thorough copy of the WordPress database along with all the files on the new web host server but you still need to point your domain to the new hosting account. In order to do so, you have to switch the DNS name servers. In case you also registered the domain with the host, the best course of action is to transfer your domain to your new web host.
For this purpose, you will be needing the name server info from the new host. It normally comprises of two URLs that appear like these:
ns1.hostname.com
ns2.hostname.com
This guide discusses the modification of the DNS name servers registered with GoDaddy but you can use the same guide for other hosts as well as the basic concept is pretty much the same.
So in order to do so, you need to find the name servers in your domain management area. In case some assistance is required on account of updating the name servers, the web host may also be asked.
The first step requires you to login to the account and hit the ‘Launch’ button present right by ‘Domains’.

Now click on the domain name and hit the ‘Manage’ link.

Now you can enter the custom DNS name servers in the new screen.

Save the new changes and they would be deployed within a timeframe of 48 hours.

WordPress is a great platform for developing and maintaining different kinds of websites and other similar platforms. It offers a lot of customizability and other features that make it very easy and handy to use. One of the best features offered by WordPress is the fact that we can integrate it directly into PHP scripts rather than developing a whole new plugin for to do the job. A few details on how you may be able to do that are given in the sections below.

The basic idea

Different people like to deploy different kinds of approaches when it comes to creating different kinds of websites and other similar platforms but all of them usually have something in common, that is, the use of lots and lots of customized PHP code. So if you are one of those developers who like to use customized PHP code in your websites, a great option is to deploy WordPress into your existing PHP scripts.

This approach comes in very handy especially in cases when there is a massive PHP code base coming from some of your previous efforts in web development. In addition to this, usually there are some other libraries within your code as well. These include Pear, Zend Framework, Symfony and a variety of others as well. The problem with these libraries is that you do not want to take them apart as using these libraries, you accomplish a working piece of code that you do not want to tear apart. So making use of this approach serves as a big win in this regard.

You can develop a better understanding of this concept by considering a real time scenario. For instance, consider a scenario which requires you to create a form for the collection of data for one of your clients. Think of it as an extra ordinary form that comprises of more than 100 different form variables which are made up of different kinds of items like text areas, check boxes, radio boxes, text input, etc. So creating this kind of form right from the very beginning might turn out to be a hard job. But what if you could simply integrate it into the form of a PHP script? That’s right! Your life would become much easier. You can go through the following solution which is given below in order to find out how you might be able to integrate such kind of stuff into a PHP script.

Existing code

In order to illustrate the process of integrating WordPress into a PHP script, consider the simple piece of code that is given below.

The problem with this code is the fact that it comprises only of the things that deal with the collection of the data and the overall functionality of the form. How would you be able to grab the same feel and look of your existing site and thus the existing form? How would you be able to manage the fact that the above mentioned code generates the very same layout that you designed for your WordPress application?

There are multiple solutions to do so. For instance, you can make use of a very simple solution that requires you to make use of the raw HTML. This appears to be the simplest choice but there are two major issues associated with this approach: it isn’t dynamic and consumes a lot of time. But on the other hand, if your WordPress template goes through some kind of changes, you would require to get in there in order to make all the changes manually and that is something that you definitely do not want to do. Consider the below mentioned piece of code to grasp the concept in a better way.

So when you would make the above mentioned changes in your code, there is a good chance that it might not work the way you anticipated it to work. As a matter of fact, you would need to do a ton load of work like including the overall style sheets, matching the navigation and ensuring the fact that your HTML completely matched the overall feel and look of the original website as well.

The best solution

As discussed above, there are several approaches to integrating WordPress into PHP scripts but not all of them are the most optimal ones. You need to figure out the most optimal solution in this regard that requires you to do the least amount of work while taking care of a lot of things for you. The best solution in the current scenario is instantiating the WordPress and making use of the built in functions within the code. Consider the following piece of code for example:

Checking out the above code, you would have learnt that the concept was very easy and simple. First of all, WordPress got instantiated into the page and then the page was instructed to call the original footer and header functions of the WordPress.

These header/footer functions offer everything required for creating the template of a WordPress website. In addition to this, they also help in automatically populating the java scripts, CSS and HTML right on the top as well as on the bottom while perfectly optimizing your existing code.

Conclusion

When it comes to integrating WordPress into PHP scripts, the best course of action is to let PHP take its own course in order to accomplish all the required work. You do not require duplicating any of your WordPress code into the pure form of HTML as you can easily generate it on your own by making use of WordPress itself.

In addition to the above mentioned advantage, there are a few added benefits as well. For instance, in case the main layout of your WordPress website goes through some kind of change, all the changes would be immediately reflected by the template that wraps up all your customized PHP code.

WordPress has been in business for more than ten years now. It came into being in the year 2003 and has managed to stay among the list of the most popular and effective blogging software applications available in the market. Over the course of the recent few years, the WordPress horizon has managed to expand further beyond its usual point of coverage. As a matter of fact, WordPress is now being used as a very efficient tool for carrying out content management related tasks on non-blogging websites as well. In other words, WordPress has managed to take the form of a tool that turns out to be really helpful in easing things up greatly when it comes to web development. A few compelling reasons that help you understand how WordPress plugins are going to make web development much easier for you are given below for your convenience and understanding.

Ease of Use

WordPress in general and WordPress plugins in particular are very easy and convenient to use. They allow you to take care of certain things very easily and conveniently. These include adding new posts, pages, images, multimedia and several other kinds of jobs that are otherwise known to be pretty hectic in this regard. This is due to the fact that the technology used by WordPress in its plugins is pretty simple yet high end. It greatly reduces the time that you otherwise would have to spend upon lots and lots of formatting.

Manage your WordPress website using any PC

A big advantage offered by WordPress is the fact that it may easily be accessed using any computer since it is a browser based platform. All you need to do in order to make use of a WordPress plugin is to log into your WordPress account from any computer and make the required changes within no time.

Does not require any FTP or HTML editing software

One of the best things about WordPress is the fact that it comprises of a very self contained system that does not need any secondary software like dream weaver or adobe contribute. Rather than making uses of third party software applications, you can take care of any web development related job by using different kinds of plugins offered by WordPress.

Search Engines Optimization

The code written for the creation of WordPress plugin is usually very simple and clean. That makes it really easy for a search engine like Google to read as well as index the contents of your WordPress site along with the used plugins. In addition to this, every one of the pages, images or posts may also have their own title, description and meta tag keywords as well. All of this stuff can easily be optimized and your website might acquire a decent standing in the results generated by a search engine.

WordPress plugins offer complete control of your site

Unlike other web design and development tools available in the market, the WordPress plugins offer the complete control of the website. Using these plugins, you do not have to wait for web designers to make different updates to the website while you can do that on your own using the simple plugins offered by WordPress. This not only saves you a lot of time but you also get to save a good some of money as well.

Offers completely customizable layout for your website

WordPress plugins allow you to make different kinds of changes on your website in order for it to achieve the functionality of your own choice. The overall feel and the entire layout of your website may be customized completely on the basis of your own requirements so that your clients might be able to experience a unique and classy experience of your own choice.

Readily available blogs

WordPress was actually created to serve as a platform for blogging but it eventually grew into something much bigger. But considering its basis, we can easily use different kinds of WordPress plugins in order to create different kinds of blogs with RSS, email subscriptions, commenting capabilities and a wide array of several other features that are usually offered by different kinds of blogs. Different types of WordPress plugins make it very easy for the developer to create a high functioning blog having a layout of their own choice.

Extend the overall functionality of your website

The WordPress plugins come in very handy when it comes to extending the overall functionality of a website and adding new features of different kinds to it. Majority of the plugins are available for free while some of them cost reasonable amounts of money but keeping in view what they have to offer, the price seems to be very reasonable. You may use different kinds of WordPress plugins to accomplish different tasks. For instance, you may create a facebook fan box, a twitter feed, video gallery or even an event calendar according to the exact requirements of your website.

Enables your website to grow with your growing business

WordPress plugins offer a lot of potential on account of scalability. Every good business or other kind of website usually has a potential for growth. When you make use of different kinds of WordPress plugins, you may scale your website to hundreds or even thousands of pages and it won’t cast any effect on its overall performance and functionality.

Have multiple users

If you are the administrator of a WordPress website, you can offer different types of privileges to different kinds of users by accessing the administrative account of your website. Different kinds of WordPress plugins might be used to offer different kinds of access levels to different types of users in this regard.

To display blog post by using a shortcode, we have to run a WordPress custom query using WP_Query class, the “classic” blog page is a WordPress main query, this is why your related post plugin does not work with our blog shortcode.

The plugin probably has function to integrate into blog shortcode, you can contact us via our services page for customization assistance. https://theme4press.com/services/

Hello!
Thank you for your answer 🙂
The only reason I use the shortcode is because you don’t provide an option in the administration panel to make the blog in full width. (And 4 columns blog with the default blog width is just impossible for the user experience)…

So could you please tell me what to change in the theme to make the blog full width?

Sorry, I am just an employee and I have to follow company rules, my employer is not going to pay me for customization work done for customer, or any customization assistance, other than providing Custom CSS code.

Hope you understand my difficulties. It’s difficult for me to find this awesome job as a Support Moderator in this forum. Thanks!

Hello,
I understand the hard border between technical support and customisation and so your position.
Could you just give me the file/function/line where this is manage?
This is just technical support, don’t need more…

Hi!
OK cool, thanks for this starting point!
I will take a look and if it is too much trouble there I will come through your customisarion service 🙂
The thing is, this is for a amateur blog which doesn’t really make money for now…
However I might be curious to know the price to add a feature which might be added to the official theme…
Like adding a radio button to turn on/off the full width on the blog page or add some input to choose the thickness/space between blog post…
I really thing your theme is awesome and that you are building a great community around… Maybe there is a way to turn it into profits by asking people some features ideas and “crowd founding” the development of some of them so every body get happy 🙂

Well just ideas… Have a good day, and thank you again!
Viktor.

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